Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Double Edged
by Double Edged Team
Summary: Gathered by the machinations of an unknown force, humans and pokémon find their fates aligning beyond expectation. Among them are Mathew Walker, an engineer hanging by a thread, Joey Johdaile, an amnesiac, the odd Jermy Shock, and Meowth, a troubled outcast. An uphill battle that will put their friendships to the test awaits — but the biggest threat lies in wait within. (Rebooted!)
1. The Light

**The following text is intended for veteran readers of Double-Edged, before the reboot. New readers are free to skip this.**

**Hello, readers. Welcome to Version 4! (The second version that is actually a fic.)**

**Q: Why did you reboot?**

**A: Our motivations were two-fold. First, we were very unsatisfied with the direction Version 3 took after chapter six. We failed to plan out the details of that portion of the story and ended up losing track and focus. Additionally, we had serious issues with the quality of the first and second chapters which seemed to deter our readers. In trying to correct those matters, we decided to uproot the story entirely and start anew.**

**Q: Do I have to read the new chapters if I've already read them before?**

**A: We would _like_ you to — there are new elements we plan to introduce and ideas we've reconciled in neat ways — but you can theoretically skip everything that takes place in Kalmwa'er and get the gist of what is going on. Everything outside of Kalmwa'er, though? You should definitely reread that. We plan to make heavy changes to it.**

**Q: Awww, but I really liked Version 3! Are the original chapters really gone forever?**

**A: That's the good news. We've decided to start an archive of our cut and unreleased materials in our server. All of the original chapters will remain kept comfortably in there. We will also periodically update the archive as the story continues, so it's worth checking out!**

**Thank you all for being so patient with us. Without further delay, let's hop to it!**

* * *

Prologue: The Light

The streets of the Nevada town were coated in two layers — the first made of the darkness of night, the second made of the gloom of its citizens. When not bound to their homes by the blistering heat of day, the dwellers of their desert Earth were quick to scourge one another, desperate for resources. In spite of the cries of a governing body with its waned might, a depressing anarchy had besieged the land. This lawlessness was held to only one rule, not out of legality but of social circumstance: there was one house that was never visited by the scavengers that cut through the night like knives. The home was fabled with a tale that left its owner restless — and, on one night, restless he was indeed.

The man tossed and turned, seeking the comfort he needed to rest. Each shift in his bed brought him closer to the inescapable truth that the peace of sleep would not arrive. It had been months since this room, now nearly barren besides a bed and a dresser, or these dreams, now filled to the brim with pricks and pains, had felt like his own.

With nowhere else to go in this all-consuming void of a bed, he turned his exhausted body to face the side with the dresser. There was nothing there… Nothing he could speak of. His vision blurred with tears, but he refused to let them settle. The man hopped out of the hopeless endeavor. He just wasn't going to sleep that night. Again.

He tip-toed to the kitchen, the perfect place to distract himself. There were plenty of midnight snacks lying around that he could munch on to fill in the empty space where sleep should go. Or perhaps he could drink the night away. That'd be easy. Nice, even. Slowly, he reached for the refrigerator door and—

The man turned around only to find himself blinded by a giant ball of searing heat and energy right in front of him. "Greetings," a voice boomed, seemingly coming from the light itself.

The light was so overwhelming. He screamed as his back began to slide down the door until he was sitting on the wooden floor. With unnerving accuracy, his hands slid into a low kitchen drawer and pulled a knife. "GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME!" he screamed. "I'm not ready to go crazy yet!"

The gleam of the ball dimmed somewhat, as if to quell the man's fear. "Do not fear, for I have not come to bring harm to you. Quite the opposite, in fact."

The man was sure he understood what this was now. Rather than quell them with gluttonous coping methods, his brain had decided the best option to counter his overwhelming feelings was with an equally overwhelming dosage of lunacy. "Fine," he said defeatedly, accepting how far he had fallen as the knife was put back in its place. "Just tell me what you want to say already."

"I'm speaking to you from another dimension. Have you, by any chance, heard of Pokémon?"

The man snickered at his own absurdity. "That's a weird question for my own mind to ask. But yeah, I've played a few games before. What about them?"

"In my world, pokémon are real, living creatures."

The man sighed and shook his head, fear fading to comedy. "Really? Of all things to imagine, I dream up a guy preaching to me about alternate dimensions made up by a corporation for profit? Good going, me."

The voice audibly sighed. "Still don't believe I'm real? Take this."

Falling out of the ball of light, a thick, three-ring bright blue binder slapped the man square in the face. The reality of the situation hit him then; he had not gone crazy, and the ball talking to him was no dream. "Oh…" he muttered to himself, now in just plain shock.

"In this binder," the voice explained while the binder fell into his lap, "are blueprints. These blueprints are for a portal generation device designed to allow you to create a rip in this universe and jump into another. This rip will allow to venture into my world: Solceus."

The man opened up the binder. Various papers filled its pockets, showing every angle inside and out of this seven-foot, circular device. No easy creation, that's for sure. "And you expect me to make this big, complex thing…how, exactly?"

"There is no need to play coy," the light told him. "I know very well that you are an engineer, a forager, and a public figure. At the time of your youth, the possibility of crafting such a thing may have once held doubt. But this is 2064! Your skills and funds, combined with these blueprints, are all you will need to assemble the right parts."

The light was right. The man couldn't deny any of the high praise he sent his way. For a brief moment, that gave him confidence, and he considered that maybe this light coming into his life wasn't so bad. Still, he remained skeptical. "Why should I come to this place you're talking about?" he asked.

"Don't you see the world you're living in? How miserable it is?"

The man slouched against the wall. "Yeah. It's _twenty sixty four_," he mocked. "You're screwed, I'm screwed, the planet's screwed, it's the goddamn apocalypse. What about it?"

"You can use this gateway into my world to escape. Start again. And in return, all I will ask for is your presence and assistance."

The man paused on this claim. He tried to have doubts about this miraculous encounter, but this idea gave him a warm but foreign feeling he could no longer deny. Was this…hope? He wanted it to be hope. "Well… It's worth a try, at least," he conceded.

"Excellent!" the light was enthused, as if this was a bigger occasion for him than it was for the man. "Now, before I part, I should mention that going to this dimension will turn you into a pokémon as well, but I'm sure you can live with that, can't you?"

"Wait, hang on. What should I do about my—?"

"Good," the voice interrupted, leaving the man's question unheard. "Until we meet again." With that, the ball of light slowly shrunk into nothing, leaving the man to rub his eyes and adjust back into the darkness of night. No longer blinded, the man got a long look at what the blueprints had to say. At the bottom of each diagram, essay, and graph, the page was signed with a pair of initials written in white: D.E.

Satisfied, the man closed the binder, stood up, and placed it on the kitchen table. He then made his way towards the dining room that, in all its years, had never been used. He would need more space than just his workshop for this new project.

* * *

Eight months. Eight long, grueling months were what it had taken to construct this mechanical masterwork, this thesis of progress. It looked miserable, only barely blending with the blueprints' design and having been bent down to fit the ceiling of his burnt dining room, but thanks to some mercilessly expensive purchases for materials online, he had finally completed the project. For the thirteenth time.

The man spent a solid two minutes praying for his machine to finally work once and for all. He was desperate now. Ever since that chance meeting, he couldn't get the light out of his head. His reassuring voice, his generous gesture…granted, his entrance needed work if the light didn't want him to pull a knife, but nonetheless he had grown fond of that experience. All he wanted now was to meet D.E. and end the nightmare, both in sleep and in wake.

After the man finished bargaining his soul, having bargained everything else he still had aside from the snazzy-looking suit and burgundy polka-dotted tie he had put on just in case he ended up warping into a meeting or something, he decided it was time. Slowly, he pressed the button on the left side. Tiny streaks of sparks began dancing across the ends of the circular machine, becoming more frequent with each bolt. The man stumbled away, fearing another explosion. However, after a few seconds, the rip was formed with no fanfare: an opening resembling a black, empty void.

"YES!" The man shouted in blissful joy. It was done! He could finally leave this awful Earth! Frantically, he began assembling his supplies for the journey, throwing whatever he thought important into a light brown backpack. His special spinoff project breaking away from the blueprints? Take! An emergency lunch? Take! His video player? Uh… A little sentimental, but that was fine. And how could he leave behind his computer?! Thank God for protective sleeves…

_Huh,_ a thought occurred to the man. _I wonder what Solceans worship? Don't they have, what's his name...Arceus? Is D.E. Arceus?_ He shrugged it off for now. He's get those answers when he found D.E.

Throwing the backpack into the corner for the moment, the man went over his plans one last time. He had everything, except...except for…

No, no. He couldn't think about that. It was an awful loss — the hardest part of these eight months — but it was time for happier days. All he needed was one last look at Nevada and he was gone.

The man stared out the window of his dining room. Unlike his meeting with the light, the night was clear. The moon glowed upon emptied streets. Nobody was outside… Not that it mattered, since he didn't know anybody in this town anymore. Not a soul in the area would really miss him.

The man grabbed his backpack, rubbed his chin for a moment - this might be the last time he'll have a beard, after all - and then stepped into the rip.

* * *

**Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Double-Edged**

**By Double-Edged Team (LukerGamerz, DommyMcDoodle, and PaperMario)**

**Also available on the Thousand Roads forums.**

**A code to the official Double-Edged server is available in our profile's bio!**


	2. Solceus

Chapter 1: Solceus

The rush was surrounding, engulfing. It pushed and pulled as if it were the breath of the Earth. The water cradled the boy, soothing him.

The water...water..._water is an essential part of human survival. For as long as either have existed, civilizations have built their foundations on rivers and coastlines, tying their fates together. Even in the distant lands of the western frontier, desert-trotters with brimmed hats, roped lassos, and bold horses would survive on canteens and waterholes. So, when defenseless water sources are ravaged by pollutants caused by ignorance, overuse, and abuse, it's only natural that next to go is—_

_CRASH!_

The boy was slammed in the side as a wrathful wave overcame him. He was flung forward, smacking the ground chest-first, then back-first, then whatever-this-appendage-is-first. Bitter salt water filled his odd-feeling throat, prompting the boy to cough himself awake. He fumbled the best he could onto his rear. He sunk a little into the...sand beneath.

The boy looked down at the darkened surface below him. He was on the shoreline of a beach… That explained why he had uncovered some old philosophizing about water, of all things, from the back of his brain. But why had he been napping this close to the shore? He figured he was smart enough to avoid rip currents.

On that subject, why was he on a beach in the first place?

The boy found some way to get to his feet, fighting past this strange feeling that must've come from ingesting that salt water. A whirl around gave him a contradictory image. The glistening horizon didn't show any signs of boats or vehicles that you'd usually expect around a populated beach — and the way the land bended didn't let him see anything but forest and shrubbery. But the beach behind him was strewn with bags, boxes, cans, shards of plastic, loose paper prints with unfamiliar logos on them… It was kind of a mess, if the boy wanted to be honest. Was he near civilization or not? Either way, the lack of anyone in sight was a bad sign.

The boy gave another look to the beach that had so rudely awoken him, after all of that serenading with the gentle noise of the tide. The ocean shone an undoubtedly bright blue, with a transparency that gave the surface clarity. It looked like something straight out of a magazine for those fancy cruise ships. So did that mean he was on an island in the Bahamas? No, that didn't seem right. The line of trees masking a hill behind him had much more of an inland look than a coastal look, lacking any kind of palm trees or coconuts and _how do I know all this?_

He took a step away from the shoreline and turned inwards. What class was he drawing all this information from? Was it a biology class? No… Maybe a grade school fact? But he couldn't piece together the exact moment or person he got it from. The boy was staring at a list of names with nothing to attach to them.

What..._did_ he remember?

_My name is Joey Johdaile_

Okay… What else?

_I am sixteen years old_

Good. What was he doing before he woke up?

…

What town does he live in? What school does he go to? What are the names of his friends?

…

Where are his parents?

…

Who are his parents?

…

…Well, ain't that a problem.

Joey began heaving as his nerves set in. He was alone, an amnesiac, stranded on a beach with no society, and _what the heck was wrong with his face?_ He thought it was just dizziness at first, but this was something else entirely. The puffing of his mouth was so far away from his eyes, and the air in his nose felt like it was moving...sideways? And what was that when he tried crossing his eyes? It was way too long to be a nose…and blue. Joey pulled his palms into view. His hands, if that's what you'd call such thick, nubby things, were that same light shade of blue. He fidgeted his new fingers together — they moved similarly enough to what he thought he should feel, he supposed, but it still felt decidedly _off_, as if he was—

Wait.

Joey slowly opened his mouth. The thing in his crossed peripheral raised.

That's not a mouth. That's a...maw. A crocodilian maw!

Now Joey was on a whole new level of dread. On top of all those other problems, he couldn't even call himself human! Could this get any worse?!

That was the last factor needed to get Joey moving. He had to find somebody else, find society, get his memories back, and figure out what exactly he was right now.

_Grumble…_

…And he needed to do it fast, if he didn't want to resort to hunting.

Joey hustled through large stalks of grass as he approached the hilly forest. There was an incline behind the first layer of trees. If he could just get a vantage point…

Joey trudged up a hill and quickly realized he had gotten himself into a much tougher climb than he had anticipated. Not helping were his much shorter-feeling knees, which could only hold so much footing at this tight of an angle. However, sure enough Joey found his way to the top — but the boon of the climb quickly revealed itself as something entirely different.

The boy-turned-crocodilian gawked as soon as he spotted him. Lying right on a dirt trail weaving up and back down the cliff was...another animal! Whatever it was seemed just as unrecognizable as himself. The shorter brown creature might have been reptilian, but there was no way to tell beyond that white mask of his — aside from a nasty, exposing crack on its right side. Joey strafed around the unconscious creature, studying him. Looking closer at the torso and arms, Joey felt that this creature was not wild, thanks to the fancy-looking, but very stand out tie around its neck, and a gold ring around his…thumb. Next to its body was some kind of long, slender club with two nubs at one end, covered in the same material as the mask. Joey began to realize...those substances were bones. What was this fellow doing carrying around bones?

Joey eyed to the left and right warily. Nobody else in sight…regardless of whether the animal was dangerous or not, he didn't have much else of an option. He had to try shaking him awake. He put his hands on the creature, and…

* * *

Shaking. Shaking. It's on top of him. He's gonna die. He's gonna get eaten. Fight. Fight fight _fight_—

"GET OFF!" The man screamed at the deadly blue beast atop him. He hurriedly reached for the nearest object he could grab and flung it at the creature.

"Woah!" The pokémon, which he recognized as a totodile past his panic, stumbled backwards.

The man took the opportunity to run. He stood — and he fell. He stood again, walked — tripped. His vision felt oddly clouded by… A snout? A helmet? What was that? No time to get an answer. He had to keep moving!

"Where in Sam Hill are you going?!" the totodile exclaimed behind him.

"AWAY FROM Y—OH SHIT!" The man's feet slipped out from under him as the ground suddenly dropped away. He rolled and tumbled down the inclination, bouncing and bounding — straight into the bark of a tree.

"Oh, no!" the youthful, thickly-accented voice of the totodile exclaimed as the man's hip cried in pain. Before he knew it, the totodile's shadow was overtop of his. "Are you okay, mister?!"

"Does it look like it…?!" The man groaned. A blue hand came close to his eyes. Defeated, the man slowly outstretched his hand and seized it. The totodile pulled him to his feet, giving him a moment to get accustomed to this off-kilter feeling.

"That was a nasty fall," he remarked. "You ain't got no reason to fear me, y'know. I was just trying to wake you up."

"S-sure…" the man said, eyeing his maw loaded with sharp teeth.

"Mister, I need you to answer some questions. But before that…" The totodile stepped away from the man and picked up something — presumably what the man had thrown off the hill before joining it himself. "Here you go. This is yours, right?"

"What is that?" He looked down at the object. It was a—

a—

"NOPE!" The man stumbled away from the slender, one-ended bone club. "That is not mine. Not in a million years."

"But it was right next to you," the totodile remarked. "And it's bone, like your mask."

"Mask?" The man finally realized that he was no longer the man — he was the cubone. He rubbed his hands around his mask. He found a crack where his scaly skin was exposed...on the right side of the skull. "What kind of sick joke is this? Cubone. Of course I'm a Cubone..."

"Hah?" The totodile cocked his head. "Yer gonna have to explain what yer talking about, mister."

The man ignored the totodile, too busy absorbing the irony of his new species. Now everything was coming back to him. His project, his motives, his goal… His goal! The man whirled around. "Hey, are you D.E?!"

"Uh, I reckon I'm not," the totodile quickly replied, slightly backing away from the man's spastic excitement.

"Damnit," The man said, leaning towards the totodile to swipe the club that, regardless of his feelings, he supposed belonged to him now. "I'll just store this in… Wait. Crap. Where…?!" The cubone began looking around frantically before rushing back up the hill.

"Hey, wait! You gotta slow down for a moment!" the totodile exclaimed. "I don't want you to fall again! You can't answer my questions with a concussion!"

"In a minute! Just let me find my — Oh, there it is!" The man didn't even have to reach the summit of the hill to spot his backpack laying beside a nearby bush. He supposed the thing must have rolled down the slope in the moments between stepping into that portal and being woken up by this totodile. He made a sharp turn, almost breaking his footing and rolling down the hill again in the process, and dashed towards it like a madman.

"Mister, please! Stop!" the totodile repeated.

"Almost got it… There!" The cubone skidded on his small knees as he arrived at his backpack, swiftly unzipping it and sliding the club inside. "That should be good. Now—"

The man stood up to see the totodile standing next to him. The distressed look on his face gave him a pang of guilt for disregarding the totodile for that long, but it didn't last. "Mister, do you know where we are? I woke up on the beach over yonder and I—"

"Beats me._ I_ just got here myself," The man replied, raising up his mitten-like hands in his defense. He quickly shook his head. "Real funny, D.E. You really got me," he thought aloud. "I was expecting to get dropped into a building or a city or something, but nope! Wilderness."

"Uh, slow down. Who is this D.E. guy you keep yammering on about?" the totodile asked, mild desperation fading into confusion.

"Only the guy who sent me the blueprints to get here. Wherever 'here' is…" The man's head swiveled, but all there was to see were trees and bushes, and hills with more trees and bushes.

The totodile frowned. "Oh, no. I reckon that means you're just as lost as me."

"Lost… LOST?!" The cubone exclaimed, the realization setting in. He put his hand to his skull mask. "Oh, shit. Oh, shit! I _am _lost, aren't I? What am I supposed to do about that?!"

"Hey, you gotta stay with me!" The totodile's remark didn't make the man flinch any less when he grabbed his arm. The man held still, listening to him. "I'm scared too, but if we freak out, we ain't gonna get nowhere. I reckon we can get ourselves un-lost if we keep cool."

"Right…" The cubone heaved, drawing his arm away from the totodile's.

The totodile let go and faced the hill. "The first step is to get ourselves back to the tippy top of this here hill. Maybe we'll see something from up there."

The cubone nodded. "Good idea. Let's do it…" The man grabbed at one of the straps and gave it a hearty tug, only to find it wouldn't budge. He didn't realize it before, but his backpack was actually larger than him now. He definitely couldn't carry this alone."Hey," he said, calling out to the stranger. "Could you grab that strap over there?"

"Hah? Oh, yeah, I s'pose I can." The totodile grabbed the strap he was asked to. With him in tow, the man climbed the hill for the second time, now without any sudden, ankle-breaking movements. Sure enough, there was both a vantage point and a dirt pathway at the summit. Most of their view was coated in a sea of decently distanced trees — and, on the left, a literal sea.

"You see anything important?" the man asked, setting the backpack aside.

"Something nasty-looking over there." The totodile pointed to the east. On the distant horizon, there was a place where the trees blackened and the leaves fell away.

"Well, we are _not_ going that way," the man said.

"I sure hope not," The totodile quipped. His head swiveled again. "There ain't much else to see, though."

The man also found surveyance useless. Nothing but green hills as far as his eyes could see. "Welp." The cubone looked down at the path beneath them. "Looks like the only plan we've got is to follow this path."

"That might be a lot of walking…" The totodile commented, rubbing his stomach as if it didn't belong to him. "I'm not sure I can make it that far without food."

His comment put a lightbulb in the man's head. "That's a good point," he said. "Maybe we should eat before we set out."

The totodile gasped. "You've got food?!"

"Yep!" The man leaned down and unzipped his backpack. "I packed a meal in case of an emergency. And while we eat, we can bond while sitting on…this!" Slipping it out like a magician unveiling a rabbit, the man pried out a dark blue blanket and promptly spread it out over the top of the hill. The totodile wordlessly sat down in front of him as he rummaged through the paper bag. "Here, take this chicken leg."

"Delicious!" The totodile reached out and took the fried thing — first with two hands because the man gave it to him backwards, then with one when he flipped it around to something better resembling a handle. He immediately took a massive bite out of it.

"I have a couple more things in here, but we might need them later, so I'll just…" The man pulled out a plastic bag. "Take this sandwich."

"You, uh, wanted to bond while we eat, right?" The totodile asked.

"Oh, yeah. Alright, so…" The man paused to remove the bread, coated in peanut butter all over. "I'm Mathew Walker. I'm thirty six, a bit of an engineer, and a former human. That's probably all you need to know." Mathew took a bite into the sandwich.

"…That was some really fast bonding," the totodile commented. "Also, why did you put peanut butter on both sides of the bread?"

"Donmmm fucmmmg judmmmge!" Mathew exclaimed. He reached into his paper bag and pulled out a bottle of water. It took a second to comfortably slip it under his mask, but it was worth it to clear the substance from his mouth. "I have a lot of peanut butter and I don't want to waste it. Anyways, what about you? What's your story? Where do you put the peanut butter on your sandwich?"

"Oh. I reckon my name's Joey, I can't remember most things, and I like to believe I put it in between like a normal person."

"Joey? Discarding that_ heresy_ about normal sandwiches, that's a very nice name…" Mathew looked away from Joey for a second as a twinge of a strong emotion cut him off. "Anyways, you said you woke up on a beach, right?"

"Yeah." Joey took a bite into the white meat that made up the core of the chicken leg.

"Right, right. And you can't remember things?"

Joey swallowed his food. "I think so. I think I fell asleep, but that doesn't make sense with how I became this crocodile thing. At least I'm lucky enough to have you here…"

"Optimism. Nice." Mathew nodded absentmindedly. "I can get down to a Joey with optimism."

Joey eyed him awkwardly. "Uh, okay."

Mathew took a moment to eat a bit more. Eat sandwich, drink water, repeat. Consume peanut butter, drink water, repeat. It was a nice cycle for the moment. The next time he looked up, Joey had already gotten down to the bone of the leg. "Damn, you're a fast eater, aren't you?"

"I dunno. Somehow this new maw ain't hard to get used to. I just have a big appetite, I guess."

_A big appetite._ That gave Mathew pause. _Oh God… _he _had a big appetite._ "So, uh," Mathew fumbled, trying not to jump the gun. "You said you didn't remember _most_ things, right? Do you know like, how old you are or something?"

Joey nodded. "I'm sixteen years old."

_Sixteen. Fifteen, fourt— No fucking way._ Mathew's distant nostalgia transformed into disturbing familiarity. Picturing a more immature version of this totodile's voice… He couldn't envision anybody else. It had to be him.

Joey gave Mathew a worried glance. "…Why are you staring at me like that, pardner?"

"Joey," Mathew said firmly. "Is your last name Johdaile?"

Joey recoiled from Mathew ever so slightly. "How did you know that?!"

Mathew couldn't help but gape in shock. "Oh. You're…"

Something about the way Mathew eyed Joey transformed his look into a bright-eyed eagerness, a step away from recognition. "Wait. You know me? From when I was human?!" he excitedly asked, setting down the bare chicken leg on the blanket.

"Hell yeah I do! It's been years!" Mathew exclaimed. His eyes gazed at the leg — then snapped to his own food. "Oh crap. Well thank God I didn't give you this sandwich, then!" he told Joey. "The last time I saw you, you had a peanut allergy!"

"I had a peanut allergy?" Joey's maw scrunched up in thought, then unraveled in revelation. "I have a peanut allergy. Huh. I guess I didn't really think about it 'till now…" The totodile looked to Mathew. "Why do I have a peanut allergy?"

Mathew leaned over and patted his back, careful to avoid the red line of spiky scales running down it. "Because God doesn't love you." The cubone snickered a bit at the light-hearted jab, but then he was flashed back to the last place he had thought about gods and had a horrible realization. "Shit, I just realized," he said, hopping to his feet. "Greg and Catherine aren't here." He began pacing atop the blanket. "If they got a visit from that light, too, I could totally believe they built a portal. But that should mean that I'd have seen them by now. And the fact that they aren't here, but Joey is here, but Joey doesn't have his mem—" Mathew's heart sunk. "Oh, no. Oh, _no_. Oh—"

"MATHEW!"

The cubone flinched at the shout. His introspection had once more left Joey on the same level of acknowledgement as the bread crumbs dropping from his partially eaten sandwich. He had picked up the leg and now stood over the paper bag.

"_Who_ are Greg and Catherine?" Joey dropped the leg into the bag in some childish attempt at punctuation.

Mathew took a breath, readying to explain, but...his throat halted as if it was clogged. Instead, his mind spoke to him. _Do you realize what would happen if you answered his question?_ he asked himself. _He'd get curious and ask for more and more. And then you'll have to tell him about that, and about that, and about..._that.

This was going to suck.

"Lemme finish—" Mathew promptly stuffed the entire rest of his sandwich in his mouth — any excuse to not tell Joey the bad news. After chewing and swallowing as slowly as he could, he extended his hand out, beckoning him to give him the water bottle to down the silencing substance.

Joey squinted at Mathew in a mix between irritation and confusing. "Yer…stalling. Why are you stalling?"

Mathew just beckoned with his hand again.

The totodile sighed, reached over, and tossed him the bottle. The cleansing of Mathew's mouth was as agonizing as the tainting of it. After slowly lowering the bottle to his side, his right hand awkwardly gripping it as tightly as he could manage, he finally spat it out:

"I can't tell you anything."

"What?" Joey said. "How come?"

"…Have you ever ripped off a bandage really slowly?"

The totodile looked at Mathew as if he was a dunce. "If I have, I ain't remembering that anytime soon."

"Ah, shit, right…" Mathew sighed. "Look, Joey. There is a _very_ good reason that I can't tell you anything. I just…can't tell you that reason."

Joey's expression turned skeptical. "If you can't tell me how you know me, and you ain't able to tell me the reason why you can't tell me… How do I know you really know me?"

"Joey, would I lie to you?!" Mathew asked desperately.

"I've known you for about five minutes or so, and you've been acting crazier than a runover cat almost the whole time. I don't really have a reason to think you _wouldn't_ lie to me."

"I-I know you and I can prove it!" he exclaimed. "I knew your last name before you even said it! And when I said that you had a peanut butter allergy, you suddenly knew you had the allergy! How do you explain that?"

"You could just be putting thoughts in my head," Joey countered. "If I hated somebody for what they did to me, that'd make for a mighty fine revenge plan."

"Ugh!" Mathew had no defense for that. He put his free hand against his skull mask in frustration. "This is hard for me too, you know? I really fucking _want_ to tell you. I really do. You're a good person and you don't deserve this."

"You ain't the one who doesn't know who he is here!" Joey said. "You've got the memories. If I really didn't do anything bad, and you reckon we're nice friends, then tell me who I am!"

"I CAN'T!"

_BOOM!_

An explosion matched Mathew's scream, sending wind hurtling towards them which rattled his mask and sent him stumbling. _Something_ had been launched at the base of the hill, bursting into a kickup of dirt and dust. The edges of the picnic blanket rose into the air, only held down by the things atop it.

"Holy shit!" Mathew yelled as he tried to hold himself up. His chest began heaving — at the impact site, he saw brown where green once lived marred by a layer of sediment coursing through the air. A few feet up and it would've killed them.

"What in tarnation…?" Joey muttered. His eyes darted between the two threats around him.

Mathew gave the totodile a wide-eyed look. "I'm so sorry—"

"It's fine…" Joey said dismissively, as if trying to defuse one to focus on the other. "Maybe later, when we're safe—"

"HEEEEY!"

A voice pierced through Mathew and Joey's dying frustrations — a voice that came from the same direction as the explosion. Mathew stepped forward and squinted to see through the sediment. "What kind of monster thinks he can just blow a hill up and then casually say…"

It was a pikachu. Mathew had to do a double-take looking at the yellow silhouette standing atop one of the distant hills deeper into the forest, but it was undeniably a pikachu. _An adorable pikachu_ just did this?

"What's wrong now?" Joey asked.

"One second…" Mathew shook off his confusion for the moment. He took a deep breath, and… "HEY!" he screamed. "ARE YOU THE SON OF A BITCH WHO JUST TRIED TO KILL US?!"

"I WASN'T AIMING FOR YOU!" The high-pitched, somehow meekish voice cried back. "I'M JUST TRYING TO GET YOUR ATTENTION!"

"Our attention?" Joey asked Mathew, as if this mysterious pikachu could hear him at such a low volume.

Mathew carried this confusion. "WHY DIDN'T YOU JUST SHOUT AT US?!"

"I DIIIID! YOU TWO WERE ARGUING WITH EACH OTHER SO YOU COULDN'T HEAR ME!"

"THAT'S NOT A REASON TO FIRE A LIGHTNING BOLT AT US!"

"IT WASN'T A LIGHTNING BOLT!"

"IT WASN'T?!"

"NOOOO!"

"OKAAAAY! STILL STUPID MOVE THOUGH!"

"Y'all are making my ears hurt…" Joey reached up to the sides of his head and felt around. When he brought them back down, he was poker-faced. "I don't have ears."

"ANYWAYS!" The pikachu shouted. "ARE YOU MATHEW WALKERRR?!"

"UHH… YEAH?!"

"I'VE BEEN LOOKING FOR YOU! CAN YOU COME OVER?"

Mathew paused. Looking for him? Why would this pikachu have reason to look for him, unless… "HEY! ARE YOU D.E.?!"

"NO! BUT I KNOW HIM! COME OVER AND I'LL TELL YOU MORE!"

Good enough for him. "ALRIGHT! JUST GIVE US A MINUTE TO PACK UP!"

"Wait, what?!" Joey exclaimed. "You're just gonna listen to him after he spooked us so bad?"

"Of course I am." Mathew dragged his belongings off of the blanket and began to fold it up.

Despite his air of objection, Joey stepped off of the blanket and let him fold it. "…You realize he just attacked us, right?"

"I mean, I thought you were going to attack me when you woke me up and look how that turned out." Mathew stuffed the blanket into the backpack with the remains of their lunch. "Besides, he said he was with D.E. He's a hundred percent nice, no doubt about it."

Joey frowned in irritation. "He caused an explosion."

"In case you didn't notice, you exploded into my world." The cubone tugged on his backpack. "Carry?"

"You're a tough cookie, Mathew," he remarked with a grimace before moving to help Mathew with his backpack. Soon the heavy thing stayed firm above Mathew's head and nicely in front of Joey. With no more interruptions, the pair approached the crater in the hill and—

"HEY!"

Mathew raised his head, pausing at the edge of the hillside. It was their pikachu friend again. "YEAAAH?!"

"DUCK!"

"Hah?" Joey sounded at the pikachu's shout. "Duck?"

"WINGU—"

The warning came too late. A blur flashed by the edge of the cubone's vision, right into his friend.

"JOEY!" Mathew screamed throatily as his belongings sailed out of his hands. This time it was Joey's turn to roll down the side of this hill they couldn't seem to escape — but, watching the totodile bound and bump his way through the impact site of the pikachu's attention-grabbing gambit, Mathew almost thought his fall was worse than his own. Quickly, the cubone swerved his body to face the perpetrator. Just its appearance already made him angry — its spread of blues and whites would camouflage as it eclipsed the sky or the clouds, leaving only the orange and black on its beak as a tracking guide. "WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?!" he scolded the airborne newcomer. "I JUST GOT DONE TELLING THIS PIKACHU THAT ATTACKING PEOPLE OUT OF NOWHERE TO GRAB ATTENTION IS STUPID, AND YOU COME IN HERE AND—"

"CAW!"

_Whack_.

There were two of them.

Mathew's heart skipped a beat as he stumbled from the second attack, his mask rattling his brain. When his heart came back, his whole body went into overdrive. These wingulls weren't like the pikachu — they _wanted_ to hurt them. They had to run, now.

"MEET IN THE MIDDLE!" The pikachu shouted as Mathew tried to rush his way down the impact the speaker had left behind. That was reassuring — they had a plan.

With a skid, Mathew made it to the bottom of the steep hill where the totodile laid, still on his side. "Joey, are you okay?!" he asked.

"Ow…" was Joey's only reply as he began to pull himself back up.

"Can you stand? Can you walk?" Mathew asked frantically. "That thing better not have hurt you—"

"CAW!" one of the birds above them cried, asserting their continued presence.

"I can walk fine!" Joey exclaimed. "Let's just get our butts over to that guy. Stranger or not, strength in numbers is our best bet."

"Got it," Mathew mumbled as the two of them scrambled for the backpack. They charged into the forest, Mathew leading the way with the backpack overhead and Joey just behind holding it to his chest. The sound of grass shifting around their feet turned to cracks as branches and leaves covered the ground they ran upon. Mathew's chest heaved as heavily as his heart, but he refused to stop. It was run or die.

Mathew tried to get a look at their perpetrators, only to bop his skull-covered snout on the bottom of his backpack. "Shit," he muttered.

"What's wrong?" Joey asked behind him.

"Because I have to carry this thing overhead to match with you, I can't really look up. If you don't want these wingulls to peck out our eyes like an Alfred Hitchcock movie, you're gonna have to act as my eyes and tell me if those things try something."

"Okay!" Joey said. "Uh… So, I've got two bad newses."

"Oh, great," Mathew said. "What's happening?"

"First, there's two of 'em."

"Already knew that."

"Second, you know how I said that the trees would make us safer? They, uh…know how to fly through trees."

"What do you mean, fly through trees?! Are they intangible or something?"

"No! I mean they can — Mathew! Jump left! Jump _left_!"

The cubone didn't skip a beat. With a high-pitched yelp, Mathew leapt to the side along with Joey. A blur of white passed right where they had stood. The pair landed with a scraping pain in their chests thanks to the weighty luggage.

"…They can fly between trees without hitting them," Joey belatedly explained as they pulled themselves up.

"Dammit," Mathew whined, his body already aching from strain while still trying to regain speed. "What did I ever do to these birds?"

"Maybe it has something to do with all the explosions and shouts hurting their non-ears?" Before Mathew could answer, Joey let out a gasp. "Mathew, look! To the right!"

Mathew's head shifted right. Some distance away, one of the wingulls had positioned itself for a straight shot. The breeze around them rapidly accelerated in the direction of the blue and white bird, almost as if the creature was whipping up the wind and—

Time stopped in Mathew's mind. Both his and Joey's feet were still on the move, but when the realization that they were dealing with no ordinary bird struck the man, they suddenly became sitting ducks. He could already picture what was about to happen as if he had experienced it all before. With a burst of wind behind its wings, the assailant would bludgeon the right side of Joey's unprotected head. Joey would fall over. The wingull would settle atop him and…_and_…

"NO!"

Mathew's scream in defiance came out more like a croak than a battle cry. His mind blanked in that exact second, and when it returned, he couldn't believe what he was seeing. The tree next to him cracked and groaned, crashing to the ground. The backpack, the wingull, and the chunks of bark from the bird's impact hit dirt and leaves, a footnote to the bigger target.

In his efforts to stop a perpetrator from attacking… Mathew had just felled a tree with the sheer strength of his own swing.

"...Well I'll be." Joey was left almost without speech.

"What did I just do." Realization set in. "WHAT DID I JUST DO?!" Mathew frantically fumbled to unzip the backpack. There were so many valuable belongings in here! With an attack that intense, he must've broken something! What had he ruined? The blueprints folder? His computer? The Wormhole Wristlet? Oh, god, if that's in any way damaged—

"Mathew!" Joey exclaimed. "We still got one more to worry about!"

Oh, right. The other wingull. They still had more to go before they made it to the pikachu. Mathew wanted to thank Joey for the reminder, but his mouth refused to do anything but puff air. Instead, he silently rebuilt their running formation and took off.

"So… You think you could do that again for the other guy?" Joey asked.

"I don't know how I did it the first time!" Mathew exclaimed. "And what if it falls over on you this—" The cubone's voice halted at the sound of something splashing behind them. "…What was that?"

"Uh, he's dropping water on us!"

"Water? What's so bad about—" This time, the gigantic ball of water smacked the grassy surface in front of them like a dropped missile. A sizzling sound accompanied the grass wilting. "Oh, shit!" Mathew exclaimed. "Let's weave then!"

Mathew followed Joey's weight as it yanked them right, then left, then right again, narrowly dodging pulsing blast after blast of water. The trees and brush they weaved through proved of no help in evasion.

"What on Earth are these things?" Mathew couldn't help but ask in response to the water sphere that had dropped a pace or two away. "Is this bird dropping the world's largest spit-take on us or—"

"JUMP!"

The command came a little too late for the distracted cubone. They jumped out of the way, giving the attack room to splash with no direct hit, but the droplets — spittle? — that came out of the wingull's attack lobbed towards them like tiny cannonballs. "Agh!" Mathew yelled, waving his arm around as much as he could without dislodging his hand's place on the backpack. "Joey, can you see my arm?!"

"Yeah, what's wrong with it?"

"Is it _dissolving_? Because that's what it feels like!"

"They look mighty fine to me!" Joey lurched Mathew out of the way of an incoming tree trunk, then lurched him again to evade another of those water balls.

"Then Jesus Christ, what is _in_ that water? Acid?!"

Mathew's question wasn't met with an answer, but an attack. A flashy, bright yellow thunderbolt shot into the air just barely out of Mathew's vision. The wingull wailed in defeat as it was launched away. Once more the cubone's head veered right and sure enough, there was the pikachu he spotted on the hill. He stopped to study his—

"Mathew — AGH!"

The totodile slammed into the cubone's back, sending them fumbling towards the muddy dirt below. The backpack fell forward from their hands in a way fortunately much gentler than the last drop.

"Woah! Are you two okay?" The pikachu asked. The meekness in his voice seemed much more defined to Mathew now than when he was shouting.

Joey pushed off of Mathew's back and onto his feet. "How many times have we fallen over in the last ten minutes…?" he asked between heavy breaths.

Mathew rose too, brushing off the dirt with his hands. "Too many times, Joey. Too many times…"

"Heh, no big deal," the pikachu said as he approached them. "Getting used to your new body is a bit of a process." He outstretched a hand towards the cubone. "I'm Jermy. You must be Mathew, right?"

"Yeah, that's me." The cubone shook hands with the pikachu. Now that they were no longer being chased or stumbling around like idiots, he could get a good look at Jermy's odd attire. The pikachu wore a pair of brown goggles, which worked well with his species — but it was worn over a pink bandana with a pattern of flowers with white petals and yellow centers. It was certainly a…_striking_ look, that's for sure. "Nice to meet you, Jeremy."

"It's Jermy."

Mathew snickered a bit. After his laughter came a cutting silence. "…Oh, you're serious. Uh, sorry?"

Joey stepped in to break the awkward tension. "Thanks for helping us, mister."

Jermy broke off from the handshake. "Oh, don't worry about that. I'm a pro at handling goons like those rascal dungeon pokémon!" he boasted.

"IF BY 'PRO,' YOU MEAN AVERAGE AT BEST, THEN THAT IS ACCURATE."

"Who the—?!" Mathew looked around for the source of the fourth voice to enter this conversation, but he couldn't see anybody. He was monotone, almost like the automated voices back on—wait a minute…

"Oh, yeah!" Jermy exclaimed. "He blends in a bit in the grass, so I guess you guys missed him until now." Jermy bent over and picked up something off the ground. It was a green spherical object, with a wheel at its bottom, a single arcade-like claw at its side, and a red ball of an antenna at its top. It was fronted by a bluish glass frame which pointed at Jermy in substitute of a face. "Come on, ORB, cut me some slack," he said to it. "I one-shot that wingull!"

"THAT IS THE ONLY ONE-SHOT FIGHT YOU HAVE EVER HAD IN YOUR ENTIRE LIFE," the robot bluntly replied. "IT'S A FLUKE IN EVERY SENSE. THAT WINGULL WAS UNBELIEVABLY FRAIL."

"You just _had_ to mention that…" he muttered.

"Mister, why are you talking to that ball like it's a person?" Joey asked.

Jermy whirled the front of the ball in his hands to face Joey. "This is ORB!" Jermy exclaimed. "I made him a couple years ago. He can—"

"I CAN INTRODUCE MYSELF," ORB interrupted. "I AM THE OBSERVATIONAL RECREATION BUDDY, ABBREVIATED ORB, VERSION 7.8, CAPABLE OF PERFORMING FUNCTIONS INCLUDING IDENTIFICATION VERIFICATION, DATA AND SOCIAL ANALYSIS, COMBAT ASSISTANCE…"

"Wow, that's really cool!" Mathew said. "I used to—"

"INSULT SUCCESS PROBABILITY CHECKS, KEEPING TRACK OF FORGOTTEN INFORMATION, POKÉMON COMBAT MATCHUP COMPARISONS…"

"Uh, mister robot? " Joey tried to say. "I get—"

"POKÉMON ROMANTIC MATCHUP COMPARISONS, CODENAMED 'SHIPS'…"

"Yeah, I think they get it," Jermy interrupted.

"FINE, BE THAT WAY," ORB replied. The sassy energy radiating from Jermy's scans only cemented the strange presentation Mathew was getting from Jermy. "I WILL NOW PERFORM STANDARD SCANS." A light behind ORB's front made the robot spring to life. "ACTIVATING HYPER CAMERA… ANALYZING UNREGISTERED AURAL SIGNALS…"

"Aural signals?" Joey asked. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Oh, this is just so he knows who you are," Jermy explained.

"WILL YOU TWO SHUT UP AND LET ME PERFORM MY SCANS?"

Joey lurched back. "Eep!"

_That's not just sassy — that's downright assholish!_ Mathew thought. _He's lucky I'm tired, or I'd have a thing or two to say to upper management about the laws of robotics_…

"CLEANING UP… ANALYSIS COMPLETE. SPECIES IDENTIFIED: CUBONE, TOTODILE. BOTH ENTITIES HAVE AURAS OF EARTHEN ORIGIN. AWAITING IDENTIFIER FOR THE TOTODILE."

"Hah? Identifier?"

Jermy smiled patiently at the totodile. "You know…your name."

"Oh," Joey said. "This is all real confusing…"

"His identifier is Joey Johdaile," Mathew cut in for Joey. "And mine is Mathew Walker."

"I ALREADY KNOW THAT, DINGUS," ORB said. "I'M ONLY ASKING FOR THE ONE WHO ISN'T SUPPOSED TO BE HERE."

Joey was left doubly confused by ORB. "I'm… What?"

"Uh, yeah, actually," Jermy said, putting the robot down. "We were expecting to just find Mathew out here."

"…So you don't know who I am."

"Nope!" Jermy paused just long enough for Joey to frown. "But that's no big deal!" he backpedalled. "The more, the merrier, right?"

That remark reminded Mathew of why they were talking to this pikachu in the first place. "So it's fine if there's two of us? It won't screw with anything D.E. wants?" the cubone asked.

"I'll have to figure out a thing or two, but yeah, I'm sure David won't mind it."

"David?" Joey gave a curious look.

"What? Did you not know his name before you came here?" Jermy shot a curious look right back at Joey.

"Well, uh… Mathew was the one who mentioned D.E." Joey's remark sent the gaze Mathew's way.

"D.E. was the initials on the blueprints I got," the cubone said. "I just went by that…"

"His name is David Emmons. You might want to get familiar with it before you meet him!" Jermy exclaimed with a small chuckle.

"Alright then," Mathew said before crossing his arms. "Jermy, what, exactly, does _David_ want me to do? The instructions were kinda vague."

"WE ARE CURRENTLY ON THE PRELIMINARY PHASE OF YOUR EVALUATION," ORB explained. With the way Joey looked pointing his maw downwards, he couldn't imagine how goofy the entire group seemed staring at the small thing, but Mathew looked down regardless, as this was too important to ignore. "BEFORE YOU ARE BROUGHT TO MEET WITH DAVID, YOU — AND THE TOTODILE — ARE TO BE STUDIED UNDER THE PRETENSES OF A SMALL CAREER ENVIRONMENT."

"Basically, we're going to work together on this little job called the Pick-it Up Club before we do anything serious," Jermy said. "They clean trash!"

"He wants us to clean trash?" Mathew said, a mixture of surprise and excitement touching his tongue as his head raised back up. "That's nothing!"

"Yeah! It'll be easy. I've got some employees of theirs waiting over—" Jermy suddenly jumped the tracks of his train of thought. "Oh! I almost forgot! I wanted to show you guys something!" Jermy turned in the direction of an incline in the forest and started making his way forward. ORB wheeled next to him, snapping twigs and leaves with his wheel.

"Aw," Joey said. "My arms are still weak from all this carrying..."

"Leave the backpack! We'll—" Jermy suddenly fumbled. "We'll turn right around and get it in a moment. And, uh, mind the branch."

Mathew and Joey quietly followed Jermy and ORB. The walk was slow. The pair was left breathless with each step, the ground continuing to slope and slope — but at the top, it became all too clear that it was worth it.

"Grim Reaper, take a vacation…" Mathew said. "We really are going to live!"

When the cubone had first discovered that he was venturing to a world of pokémon, he had imagined quiet villages with cute little huts and sparse populations. Mathew couldn't have been more wrong. Directly below him were some of those smaller hut-type homes, standing atop ridges carved into the side of a cliff — but below that was a whole 'nother world. Bright neon signs, busy dirt-trodden streets, two-story buildings crafted out of brick and sheetrock with steel roofs which gleaned the light of the sun towards his eyes…to his left, a pair of small docks populated with ships of many sizes enclosing a beautiful strip of beach...and to his right, scaling from the center of the cliff which surrounded the everything down to the core of the town, were the wires of a gondola lift.

"That's one purty town," Joey remarked.

"Yeah…" Mathew couldn't bring any meaningful commentary - the only adjective he had to describe the view was 'beautiful.'

"Right?!" Jermy exclaimed. "I knew getting your blind reactions out of the way was a great idea! It's my first day here, so I was kinda surprised, too." The pikachu smiled. "Welcome to Kalmwa'er!"

"AND BEFORE YOU SAY A WORD, THERE IS NO EMPHASIS ON THE T," ORB said. "I REPEAT: THERE IS NO EMPHASIS ON THE T."

Mathew kept his eyes on Kalmwa'er. If this was the _preliminary_ location, he could only imagine how incredible the paradise that awaited after he fulfilled his task would look. Frankly, he was about ready to stop here — this town was already flawless.

…Well, now that he said that… There was _one_ thing that stuck out to him.

At the town's front, bordering its beach, was a large, tall pillar of a building, painted with a pale color resembling a shade of skin. It easily towered over the rest of the town - at five or six stories, it was almost equal in height to the cliffs. There was a sign plastered upon it that read _Kalmwa'er Resort: Your NEW home for all things Kalmwa'er!_ Clearly it was some kind of hotel, which made sense — who wouldn't want to cash in on that tourist housing fund? — but something about the building gave him an odd feeling. He wanted to say it was just because it was so tall, but it felt like there was another reason, like somehow this business had missed some kind of memo.

Clearly, Joey had taken notice of the small skyscraper, too. "Jermy, what's that building over there?" The totodile asked.

"Oh, that's where we're going, Kalmwa'er Resort," Jermy explained. "The Pick-it Up Club works for that business."

"Why is it so…" Mathew asked almost absentmindedly.

"THE IDIOTS WHO PUT THAT SIGN UP FORGOT THAT A BEACH TOWN NEEDS LOTS OF NEON," ORB pointed out.

"Oh! That's it!" Mathew almost mask-palmed at the realization. How hadn't he realized that before? "It must look really ugly at night." Quickly the strange thought faded away. It was just a sign. There was nothing to worry about! All that was in the way of paradise was a paradise in itself.

This was going to be great. Mathew could feel it.

And since when had his feelings ever led him astray?


	3. Strange and Strangers

Chapter 2: Strange and Strangers

As the gray cat stared at the medical kit in his paws, he couldn't help but wonder how, exactly, his life had ended up in this place. He had spent his whole life readying to become a doctor, or a nurse, or perhaps even a therapist, and yet somehow, more than a year later, he had found himself degraded to the equivalent of a janitor. Not helping was the fact that he was also getting yelled at by a fifteen year-old girl.

"Meowth, please, I'm begging you!" his minccino coworker, Minichino, exclaimed. Her satchel was heavier than both his and the pikachu's combined. In her paw was a plastic bottle, which Meowth supposed was the thing he had missed this time that had prompted her to stop for some kind of intervention. "If you won't let me take Jermy's satchel while he's gone, will you at least let me trade satchels with you so I can fill it up myself?"

"I'm not going to take credit for your work," Meowth bluntly replied, looking up from his kit as his paw sunk back to the side of his body. "You aren't getting my satchel, either."

Minichino groaned. "Then you have to _clean_, Meowth! That's our job! Every article of trash we miss because of you is another step away from solving the problem. I can only do so much when our work hours get randomly cut like this!"

"First, you say that as if we make any actual difference whether we clean up or not," Meowth remarked, using the tip of a claw to fiddle with one of the straps wrapped behind his ear holding his glasses to his eyes. "Second, you and I both know the reason I was hired has nothing to do with cleaning. That's why I'm always paired with somebody who manages to fill their satchel even on limited hours."

"Right, right…" With a sigh, Minichino began fruitlessly pacing around, devolving their defiance of the pikachu's order to stay still from focused to floundering. Her yellow-tinted eyes fixated on her satchel as she desperately fumbled in search of some way to keep the water bottle still atop the oversized pile. "I just don't get why your dad wants you to work in the Club. It's been more than two whole weeks and you haven't expressed the first concern for the cleanliness of the community. We've known Jermy for what, an hour? And even he seems to show some care! Why does Mr. Persian want you here if you don't like this?"

"Your guess is as good as mine," Meowth said. He trailed behind Minichino as she transitioned from idle pacing to a march towards a cluster of bushes. "I don't have anybody to treat."

"At least Politoed and Breloom are nice. And Ziggy, bless his heart, he _tries_. But you?" She shook her head. "I don't get how a so-called physician-therapist can be so eco-unfriendly! You can't even be bothered to put on a happy face for us."

"So you'd rather me lie about who I am to please everyone?"

Minichino whirled around and planted a foot. "That's _not_ what I meant."

"Uh, huh." Meowth wasn't stupid — he knew what she was really trying to say. _That's _exactly _what I meant, I just don't want to say that I dislike you on more than just a working level._

"Look, Meowth, all I'm saying here is—" The cinccino paused as her large, red ears suddenly perked up, like a tiny flinch. "…Did you hear that?"

"No." Meowth let silence ring for a moment. His own ears raised at the sound of rustling in the brush behind them. He turned around, only to have Minichino put her left arm in front of him.

"Meowth, stand back!" she hissed. Raised in her right paw was the bottle, assumedly as a distraction tactic. The two held still, waiting for the moment to strike.

_Rustle…rustle…rus—_

Two bushes were spread apart.

"PLASTIC BOTTLE ATTACK, GO!" Minichino flung her arm forward, sending the plastic projectile right towards...

"Hey guys I'm — Owwww!"

Minichino gasped loudly as the pikachu who had split from them got smacked by her defensive attack. "OhmygoshohmygoshI'msosorrypleasedon'tgetusfired!" she sputtered as she ran up to try tending to him.

"It's fine," Jermy said, dismissively waving her away with a hand. "Getting you fired would just be more paperwork for me."

"Oh, okay." Once the situation cooled, Minichino immediately changed her tone. "Come on, man! Can't you give us a heads up when you're going to dramatically come out of the bushes like that? If I hadn't had this bottle on-hand, I would've sent you flying with an Aqua Tail!"

"DO I NEED TO CALL A DOCTOR?" A robotic voice asked as the spherical thing that followed the pikachu around popped out of a bush. "NOTHING WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF YOU HADN'T SENT JERMY ON A WILD GOOSE CHASE BY MOVING OUT OF PLACE. THE FACT THAT YOU FAIL TO UNDERSTAND THIS RAISES CONCERNS ABOUT YOUR CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS."

"As a medic, which is close enough to a doctor, I can verify that it was Minichino's idea," Meowth asserted.

The robot — ORB, was it? — faced the cat. "CONSIDERING YOUR PERSONALITY, I DON'T THINK YOU COUNT. YOU'RE MORE OF A WALLFLOWER THAN A MEDIC."

"Ha! See?! Even robots agree that you need to work more!" Minichino exclaimed.

"What's this about robots?"

Meowth's focus was flipped around. An unexpected visitor emerged from the shrubbery closeby: a cubone with a cracked mask and a burgundy tie. His path through the brush was swift and firm. "Jermy, do you have a second robot, or — Oh hey, more people."

"Are these the fellers you were talking about, Jermy?" A second stranger — a totodile — joined him. His approach was more slow and aimless than the cubone's.

"Yep!" Jermy exclaimed.

"Uh… Hi?" Meowth said, unprepared for this sudden development.

"Wait a minute. Why did you bring these guys here?" Minichino asked Jermy.

"These two are the reason why I had to pause you for a little bit," Jermy explained. He gestured to them with both hands as if to present them. "Meet your new coworkers!"

"Our _what?_" Meowth said. Had he heard that right?

"Coworkers?!" Minichino repeated with a gasp. Yes, his ears _were_ working properly — Jermy had just suggested that these two people who had just slid into their lives are to join the Pick-it Up Club.

"Apparently! Hi, I'm Mathew," the cubone said.

"My name's Joey," the totodile stated.

"Oh my gosh! I take everything back about limited hours today if it means getting some extra hands around here!" Minichino exclaimed. "Are you going to join too, Jermy?"

"Of course! That's kinda the point!" Jermy said.

"Can you believe it, Meowth?!" Minichino asked him. "It's a three-in-one package!"

"A FOUR-IN-ONE PACKAGE."

"A _four_-in-one package!"

"I'm glad you asked, Minichino, because I don't." Meowth looked at the trio with suspicion. "Please explain to me what you're trying to get out of this."

"We ain't trying to get anything…" Joey said.

"Yeah, we're here because that's what David wants," Mathew said.

"David…" Meowth said. That was a new name to him.

"Oh, come on, Meowth," Minichino said. "Who cares what their motivations are? They can join for whatever reason they want."

"We can probably talk about why we're here some other time," Jermy said. _And by 'other time,' I mean never_, Meowth figured he meant. "Right now though, we should probably get back to town so we can get properly signed up. Can I…?"

Meowth gave a huff. "Fine." He tossed Jermy his satchel and let him and ORB take the lead. He would have to suppress his questions about this mysterious 'David' person for now.

The group, now six strong, followed the forest's path towards the edge of Kalmwa'er. The pair of actual employees settled in the middle of the pack, as Mathew and Joey were left in the dust to pick up a gigantic backpack they had left in the bushes.

"What's with the big cargo?" Minichino asked the pair as they caught up, walking backwards to keep her eyes on them.

"It's my stuff," Mathew explained. "I wasn't expecting it to end up this large, though."

"Expecting?" Meowth asked, with his head to the side to avoid Minichino's risky maneuver. "You're the one who packed it. How did you not 'expect' the size you took with you?"

"In my defense, I had a shit-ton of stuff to pack." Mathew said, dodging the question.

"What'd you pack, your kitchen sink?" Minichino jokingly asked. "With that much space, I could've cleaned half the planet."

"Half the planet?' Jermy said, swiftly butting into the conversation. Minichino turned back around to face Jermy, leaving Mathew behind them and out of the conversation. "Why stop at half the planet?"

"Well, it could've been all the planet if Mr. Persian hadn't cut our hours for y…" Minichino paused. Meowth noticed the glint in her eyes as the minccino hatched a plan. Her eyes slowly gazed down at the satchel wrapped around Jermy's shoulder. "Hey, Jermy, random question while we're on the subject." Meowth stared deadpan at her — she was really going to do this. "Can you show me how much trash you got? Meowth and I were just talking about how much we pick up and I wanted to compare, but Mathew and Joey made me forget about it, and, you know…"

"Oh, sure," Jermy said.

This was Meowth's only chance to intervene. "I wouldn't do that if I were you," he said.

"What?" Jermy said as the satchel slid down his arm and into his hand. "She just wants to — HEY!"

With a firm swipe, suddenly the second satchel was in Minichino's other hand. Jermy was pulled so hard he stumbled forward. "Ha-HA! SUCKER!" she shouted, immediately leaping away from him before running straight back into the woods.

"Where are you going?!" Joey exclaimed.

"I'M GONNA CLEAN THIS WHOLE DANG FOREST! YOU'LL SEE!" Minichino shouted back. There she went, leaving the other four pokémon behind, dumbfounded.

"STARTING NEW STATISTIC," ORB announced. "AUTO-NAMED: 'SUCCESS RATE OF FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD GIRLS AT CONNING JERMY.' CURRENT SUCCESS RATE: ONE HUNDRED PERCENT."

"Aw, man," Jermy said. "Now I won't get paid."

"YOU HAVEN'T BEEN HIRED YET. YOU WEREN'T GOING TO GET PAID FOR THIS ANYWAY."

"I wasn't?! Why'd I take a bag then?"

"BECAUSE SHE TOLD YOU TO."

Jermy stared off into the direction the minccino had vanished behind the foliage. "Oh. So, uh, are we going to go back in there and grab her, or…?"

"Aw, more walking?" Joey whined. "I'm getting plum sick of carrying this backpack everywhere."

"If she's not worth the walk, then don't take the walk," Meowth remarked, turning towards Kalmwa'er. "Let's go."

"Are you sure she'll be okay in there?" Mathew asked with concern, despite already taking steps to follow him. "We had some wingulls really mess us up a couple minutes ago."

"It's not our place to tell Minichino whether she can play hero or not. If she can't handle it, she'll get hurt, and that'll be the end of it."

"…Damn." Meowth spotted Mathew eyeing the kit in his paw. "You're really the medic here?"

Meowth gave a slight nod. "Unfortunately."

Though there were hints of concern, the group of strangers proceeded with Meowth despite being one short. It wasn't long before an opening in the trees became clear and Kalmwa'er awaited them. Mathew, Joey, and Jermy looked in awe at the buildings they passed, large enough to be considered a mansion. Meowth didn't consider them very remarkable — they were just flaunts of money, after all — but he could see how some tourists could find them appealing.

"Wow, is all of Kalmwa'er this purty?" Joey asked.

"No," Meowth answered. "This is the better part of town. You should enjoy it while it lasts."

"Oh." Joey paused. "Why can't all of Kalmwa'er be this purty?"

"I'll take 'capitalism' for five hundred, Pat," Mathew remarked.

That comment was so bizarre, Meowth felt the need to stop walking and address Mathew. "What are you talking about?"

"You know, Jeopardy? The…TV show…"

"Never heard of it."

"…Yeah. You wouldn't have. It just hit me."

Meowth shook his head and started moving again. This cubone was clinically insane.

Finally, they made it to the edge of the top half of Kalmwa'er, where the gondola awaited. The area surrounding the gondola platform seemed surprisingly unpopulated, before Meowth remembered how quickly they were going off-work today. Blue stanchions carving a straight path blocked the way towards the launching platform, shaded by a wide ceiling and the cables from which it came. To their left were blue tables ripe for a shared meal. To their right…

"_Kalmwa'er Gondola Service, est. 1975_," Joey read off of the sign hanging atop of the small building. His voice was a bit tougher to hear due to the music in the air. "And…" Meowth watched the totodile's maw lower as his eyes sunk to the smaller sign. "_Kalmwa'er Service Informational and Snack Booth_."

"1975? Didn't the first game release—? Oh, right…" Mathew said before muttering something to himself.

"The first what?" Meowth asked.

Jermy immediately stepped in. "Nothing! I don't think he meant anything with that." _Which, of course, means he _did_ mean something, I just don't want you to know about it for some reason._ Great. As if David and Pat hadn't raised enough questions as-is.

Meowth surveyed the area around them. If he wanted to get answers, the first step was to get them comfortable around him. Considering that they seemed a little culture shocked, that booth seemed like a smart thing to offer. He got the pikachu's attention. "Jermy, you've never been to Kalmwa'er before, right?"

"Uh, yeah?" Jermy answered.

"I just got here, so…" Mathew added. Joey nodded behind him.

Meowth pointed a paw behind his head, extending a claw for emphasis. "Maybe you could learn something from this booth while we wait for the gondola."

"You mean we should _talk_ to the sketchy informational guy?" Mathew craned his head to look behind Meowth at the booth. The music backing their voices faded out and traded one riff for another.

"THAT'S A FUNNY JOKE," ORB said.

"I dunno," Joey said. "I reckon it might be nice to learn about Kalmwa'er. Plus, I could go for dessert."

"Oh yeah!" Jermy said. "I'll pay for some stuff if you want. I've got some money stored in ORB."

Joey leaned back a bit, almost pulling Mathew back with him as he tested his iron grip on his belongings. "Oh, yeah, no money. I don't wanna—"

Mathew's neck could've snapped with how fast he shot Joey a look. "Shut. Free food." He rolled his neck around a bit, almost bopping the backpack above him with the tip of his masked snout, then slowly faced Jermy. "That'd be awesome. Thanks a lot!" He also acknowledged Meowth. "And props for the idea."

Meowth nodded. The secondary credit was good enough for him.

The group walked their way over to the booth. Awaiting them, at the helm of this establishment, was the source of the music. The grovyle before them could not look any more akin to his stereotype — a vivid violet cape draped against his back, the leaf strand attached to his head folded to unfurl down the side of his face, two glossy gemstones on the neck-hold of his cape and at the forefront of a medallion dangling around his neck, and, worst of all, an apparent spread of eyeshadow. This grovyle couldn't be more emo if he tried.

Meowth did have to give him one credit, though — when they approached, he was courteous enough to shut off the radio he was strumming in air to and swiftly shove it into a bag which, in turn, was shoved under the booth. "Kalmwa'er Service Informational and Snack Booth," he stated. His voice was smooth, as if specially made to make the people of Kalmwa'er swoon. Meowth almost gagged.

"Howdy, mister lizard," Joey said.

"Hey there." The grovyle took a look at Meowth's menagerie. "Hmm… Cubone, totodile, pikachu… You three are tourists, aren't you?"

"How'd you guess that?" Mathew asked, looking at the strange pokémon skeptically.

"Well, we don't have any cubones here, I think the only totodile in town evolved last year, and pikachus tend to be tourists." The grovyle turned his attention to the pikachu and tapped the side of his own head. "That bandana and goggles combo is neat, by the way. Don't think I've ever seen that before."

"Oh, thanks," Jermy replied, impulsively fiddling with his goggles.

"THAT DOESN'T QUALIFY AS A COMPLIMENT," ORB commented. "HE STATED YOUR GETUP WAS ORIGINAL, NOT GOOD, JUST LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE WHO DOESN'T HAVE THE GUTS TO TELL YOU IT LOOKS STUPID."

"Oh, who said that?" The grovyle splayed himself across the booth to get a look at the ground, flicking his leaf-tail feathers up into the air. "Didn't even notice you there."

"Well, he's small and packs a punch, that's for sure!" Jermy said, laughing off ORB's insult.

The grovyle hopped back to his feet. "Chatty robot, huh? There seem to be a lot of those these days, especially for housekeeping. Wouldn't get one myself, though. You can't beat that Clean-it Cr—" The grovyle snapped his mouth shut. "Whoops. Tangent. My bad."

"You're good, mister lizard," Joey said. "You're being very informational."

The grovyle snickered. "Mister lizard. That's cute. Anyways! On the subject of the Crew…" He turned his attention towards Meowth. "You're the kid of the resort owner, yeah? The one who kinda swept that business off their feet?"

"Who told you about me?" Meowth asked.

"Poli and Bre. They work with you right now, right?"

Politoed and Breloom. Of course it was Politoed and Breloom. "That means you must be that Groov person they talked about so often."

The grovyle smirked. "The one and only."

"What'd they tell you about me?" Meowth asked.

"Uh… that you exist," he remarked. _And that there's something horrible about you I'm gonna avoid saying to be nice._

"_Just_ that I exist?" he pressed. "Is that really it?"

"Woah, hey!" Groov raised his hands defensively. "I'm not looking to dig out any beef, especially not with Poli and Bre's old Higher Ed roomie. I just thought I recognized you, is all."

Meowth glanced at the trio of strangers. Mathew and Joey were giving him confused looks. It was time to lay off. "Fair enough," he stated dismissively.

"Sooooo…" Mathew said. "Can you tell us a thing or two about the gondola?"

Groov cocked his head to the side. "Such as…?"

"Uh… How you get on?" Joey suggested.

"Oh, that's nothing. The door opens, you get in, the door shuts. Just wait for the occupants to disembark safely before you board yourselves. You've got thirty seconds, give or take — plenty of time. And, if you screw up, we've got a team of feathered fellows ready to keep you from splattering all over the lower class."

"Oh," Joey said. "Yay?"

"Any sort of weight rules, or…?" Jermy asked.

"Nah, you four will be fine. The thing's built to carry folk up to ten feet tall. Three one-foot and one two-foot isn't going to tug at the cables. Usually we only pay attention to height and weight in fringe cases, or if we have a line."

"YOU MIGHT WANT TO INVESTIGATE JERMY, THEN," ORB said.

"Hey, I'll have you know I am only slightly overweight for the average pikachu!" Jermy countered.

"TRUE, BUT THOSE PIKACHUS DIDN'T HAVE DIETARY ADVICE ROBOTS CONSTANTLY WHEELING RIGHT BESIDE THEM. ON THAT NOTE, WOULD YOU LIKE DIETARY ADVICE ON—"

"I'll pass."

"The snack bar's more for sweets than anything," the grovyle added. "I doubt your little robot friend could suggest something good for your diets."

"AND THAT'S WHY YOU'RE OVERWEIGHT."

Meowth eyed the pikachu as he laughed the comment off for the second time this conversation. Why was this robot so insulting? Why did Jermy only reply sometimes and ignore him other times? Would Meowth ever stop asking questions he probably isn't prepared to hear the answers to? All a part of today's great list of mysteries, he supposed.

Groov put his hands on the booth and leaned his neck back towards a sign listing foods inside of the building. "So, what'll it be?"

Meowth had already settled on a food choice while the others were talking. "One black poképuff."

The grovyle craned his head to the side. "Black poképuff!" he shouted.

"Uh… Can I get an éclair?" Mathew asked.

"Éclair!"

"One doughnut, please!" Joey said.

Groov paused to look at Joey. "What kind?"

Joey pursed his maw. "Uh… I don't really care."

"I'll take one too, as long as it's not a chocolate doughnut!" Jermy added.

Back Groov's head went. "Two doughnuts! They're not picky. Get them glazed!"

"Wait a minute." Mathew turned to face Jermy. "You don't like chocolate?"

"Yeah…?" Jermy said. "What's wrong with that?"

_Oh, no. _"Please don't tell me that you two are about to argue over snacks," Meowth said.

While this unfolded, a pair of blue wings slipped over the booth and set down a plate. "Black poképuff…" a voice low and monotone like Meowth's said before darting back into the booth. All that left was that grovyle's condescending smile.

"I'm not arguing over snacks," Mathew said. "But who the hell doesn't like chocolate?!"

"_I_ don't like chocolate!" Jermy shouted. "Why is that a problem?!"

"Éclair…"

Somebody else put down another plate — at least, Meowth_ thought_ it was somebody else, considering his voice was louder and more eccentric, like Mathew's. The cat could see Groov stifling a laugh. Time to shut them up. "You two stop bickering. There's no point in bashing each other on your opinions on chocolate."

"I'm not bashing him, though!" Mathew responded defensively. "I just think it's crazy that somebody could not like chocolate!"

"Ain't you the guy who slathers peanut butter on both sides of the bread?" Joey asked.

"I SAID DON'T JUDGE!"

"And two glazed, _non-chocolate_ doughnuts!"

All four of their heads snapped to the booth as the grovyle burst out into a long-winded laughter. The voice announcing the arrival of their food was high-pitched and meek, obviously meant to sound like Jermy — but it was those same two blue wings. The group had embarrassed themselves so thoroughly that somebody inside the booth felt it justified to mock them.

"Ahahahahaaaa, you guys are a real riot," Groov said. "Tell you what…" After grabbing something from the behind the booth, the grovyle leaned himself over the top again. In his hand was some kind of slip of paper. "For being so fun, take a coupon for this nice restaurant in town called Silvalla's. They've got nice garlic br—"

"_Thanks_." Meowth swiped at Groov's hand, snatching the coupon. The cat paused to make sure he saw that his claws were extended.

"NOW THAT YOU DOLTS HAVE STOPPED YOUR PETTY BANTER," ORB stated, "YOU MIGHT WANT TO BOARD THE GONDOLA BEFORE IT'S GONE."

_Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!_ Everyone's heads swiveled towards the boarding platform at the sound. a group of pokémon departed from the tall, slender gondola car. "A gondola car is arriving at the station," A deep, chipper recorded voice stated. "Please allow all pokémon occupying the car to depart safely in a timely manner. Watch your step as you board, and—"

"And enjoy the ride!" Groov exclaimed in mocking tandem, probably for the umpteenth time. "You better take your food and run, then." Groov took a step back from the booth. One hand stayed firmly out of sight as Mathew and Jermy grabbed their plates. Joey was kind enough to grab Meowth's for him.

"YOU'RE FORGETTING SOMETHING ELSE," ORB added.

"Shoot, I haven't even paid for the food!" Jermy instantly realized. He set down his plate on the ground and reached for the robot.

"No need!" Groov quickly announced.

Jermy, confused, took his hands off ORB. "Uh… Why?"

"Making you pay for your food with currency is the _heroic_ thing to do," he explained. "Since Meowth here clearly thinks I'm a villain, I'll make you pay the _villain's_ way!"

The grovyle's obscured hand flicked up. In it was some kind of canister of - aaaaaaand now there's silly string on Meowth's glasses. This stranger was spraying silly string on him. This was his life now. Great.

"Hey!" Joey exclaimed, grabbing Meowth by the arm with his free hand. "That's really rude!"

"You're next!" Groov said in a gravelly voice shaky from refrained laughter as he pointed the can at Joey. "You better make that gondola or I'll freaking shoot!"

"Wah!" Joey, seemingly taking the threat seriously, ushered Meowth away from the booth. The grovyle broke character, snickering like a dork behind them as the pair hurried to join Mathew and Jermy in the gondola. With a hop and a slide, Meowth planted himself on a nicely cushioned blue seat. Mathew, Joey, and Jermy sat across from him, the large backpack squished between the cubone and the glass wall..

"Woah. What the hell happened to you?" Mathew asked.

"I saw what happened," Jermy piped up. "Meowth got-"

"COMING THROUGH!" a familiar female voice shouted. A grey blur leapt into the gondola body-first. She smacked into the window across from the door and hit the floor with a thud.

"Minichino?!" Joey exclaimed. "When did you get back from the woods?"

Her head slid up towards the totodile like he was crazy. "I've… I've been back. Didn't you hear me when…when I said hi while you guys were getting…food?" she panted.

"We were too busy conducting an experiment on the fastest method to lose your reputation in Kalmwa'er," Meowth said, reaching for his pokepuff placed next to Joey.

As the door slid closed and the gondola began its journey downwards, Joey kept his attention fixated on Minichino. "Are you okay?" he asked as she slid herself next to Meowth's satchel.

"Huh? Yeah, I'm fine." Minichino reached down to grab some scraps that had fallen out of her satchels when she jumped. "Filled up Jermy's satchel, so that's a bit of a mission success."

"I reckon that's a good feeling," Joey said before dropping his doughnut directly into his maw.

"Totally. No guilt left on my conscience!" She grabbed a plastic bottle from the satchel — seemingly, the same one from before — and waved it around.

"I suppose that bottle is a token of victory to you now," Meowth said between bites. "Maybe you should hang it up on a wall."

"Maybe I will!" Minichino snapped back. "Anyways, what happened to you?"

"Silly string happened—" Meowth could barely so much as finish his reply before Minichino reached over and pried his glasses over his head. "Ow," he said, the strap pushing his ears as it was pulled through them.

"Oh," Minichino said, dangling his glasses in front of his eyes. She rubbed the blurry mass that resembled her tail around the frames. "I wanted to clean the stuff off of your glasses. I probably should've asked if I could take them off. Sorry."

Meowth turned his head around to look at the town outside of the gondola, soaking in the clarity of what was far away. "It's fine. I didn't want to see you anyway."

"Hey!" she exclaimed, thrusting the glasses into his lap. Meowth fitted the straps back around his ears and slowly lowered them over his eyes. Silence overtook the five of them as the gondola slowly guided them downwards, swaying the slightest bit left and right. Meowth was the second to finish, leaving Mathew and Jermy to nom away at their own food patiently.

In the meantime, Meowth took a moment to assess what was going on, letting his eyes glaze over as he ventured into the recesses of his mind. There was no doubt in his mind that something was afoot here. Beyond the sheer randomness of their emergences, these three strangers were just _off_ somehow. They were simultaneously aware of things Meowth had never heard of, like this "Jeopardy" Mathew mentioned, but completely oblivious to the obvious, like the social contract of not bickering with one another in front of strangers. Just who were these three? What did this David person want out of them? And, considering how Jermy first entered his life, did the answers to these questions have something to do with—

"Hey, Meowth, why are you the Club's medic?"

Meowth's head snapped up towards Mathew. "Why do you ask?"

Mathew leaned his head and his arm against the glass of the gondola, tapping the side of his skull mask with a claw. "Well, it's just that we'll have to work together for the next few days. We might as well do some ice-breaking, right?"

Meowth sighed. "My father told me that his employees would need a doctor if they were going to enter Mystery Dungeons," he explained. "As a physician-therapist, he thought I would be good for the job."

"Hold on, a what now?" Mathew said. "You mean you're a physician _and_ a therapist?"

"…Well, yeah," Jermy said. "That's what physician-therapist means."

"I mean, yeah, I get what he said, but that sounds like it involves a ton of licenses. When did you have the time to do all this?"

"When you have ten semesters to work with, it's not impossible," Meowth continued. "Physician-therapist was the most versatile health career available."

"Ten sem…" Mathew fiddled with his mit-like hands, as if trying to count with digits that didn't exist. "That's five years. How old are you?"

"Nineteen. Why?"

"How in the world—" Mathew finally made a realization. "Oooh! Education must be totally different here. Why didn't I realize that?"

"What's it like where you're from?" Minichino asked.

"Uh…" Joey racked his brain. "I think it goes preschool, then elementary school, then middle school, then high school, and then college. Right?" Joey glanced at Mathew.

"Yeah, Joey's got it right," Mathew said. "And you get out at like, twenty two."

"Twenty two?! No way, that's terrible!" Minichino exclaimed. "Way closer to a third of our lifespans. Here you're out by eighteen. You go to Lower Education first. My Lower Education school was, uh…" She tried turning around, then shook her head. "Aw, I think we're too low now to see it up on top. But then when you're thirteen, you graduate, and the next year you can go to Higher Education. The campus for that is right over there — it's just a short walk from the gondola." Minichino had much more success pointing. Mathew spotted some brick buildings surrounded by some well-kept grass and connected by a criss-cross of walkways and street lights.

"I think I'm getting it," Mathew said. "Your Higher Education is our college, though we have four years instead of five."

"Are the prices better?" Meowth asked.

Mathew vehemently shook his head. "Hell no, college prices are godawful."

Minichino sighed. "Why is it so hard to get a good education? Mom and Dad tried everything they could and they _still_ can't pay for it."

"Oh, damn, that's gotta suck," Mathew said.

The minccino clenched her paws before focusing in on the humans. "If you guys are really gonna join the Club, you better work hard with me! Then we'll get really popular, so a bunch of people will join us and more money will get put into it. I'll use the money to get myself a Dungeoneering degree so I can clean Mystery Dungeons for real!"

_Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!_ "The gondola is arriving at the station. Please slowly and calmly depart from the gondola. Enjoy your stay in Kalmwa'er!"

Sure enough, just as the announcer stated, the gondola car had reached its destination. The landing platform looked fairly similar to the one at the top, though with a wider roof and a smaller booth on the side that lacked any kind of opening to talk to the people inside. The doors slid back open.

"Well, that's my cue," Minichino remarked, standing up. "I gotta get all this trash to the dump. Good luck with your applications for the Club!"

"Thanks!" Joey exclaimed as she stepped out, quickly giving chase with Mathew and the backpack in tow. Meowth let the two strangers take the lead this time — it was clear they knew which obscenely tall building to approach.

A couple blocks and a few streets later, and there they were, standing in the shadow of Meowth's father's creation. A glass-coated sliding door awaited their approach.

Mathew looked straight up. "Man, that sign still looks like shit from here, even up close."

"It's better inside, I promise," Jermy reassured as he made the doors move aside. The lobby was deceivingly cozy — the strangers were first greeted with the sight of a large room with hard wood flooring, beanbag chairs arranged in circles ripe for comfort and conversation, and a large fan hanging from the ceiling. The vertical angle of the wood starting from the entrance made an aisle with a straight shot towards the reception desk, backed by a wall. Two openings on the sides of the reception transitioned from wood to tile, alluding to grandeur closer to the resort's core. The aesthetic of the building was a clever blend of comfort and spectacle — that was the one thing Meowth would give him credit for.

"Excuse me, sirs," a voice said. Approaching them was a hulking brown bear of an ursaring. "Welcome to Kalmwa'er Resort. Might I assist you with that luggage of yours?"

"Heck yeah you can!" Mathew exclaimed, holding the backpack towards him. "Hold this for me until we come back to the lobby."

"Will do." Mathew and Joey were relieved of their weight as the ursaring took their burden.

While the strangers solved their luggage problem, Meowth kept focus on the matter that concerned him most. Right in front of them, standing just ahead of the reception desk, was his father, chatting away with Mrs. Cinccino, who resembled her daughter in every way aside from the white fur wrapped all around her body.

Meowth recalled what Mr. Persian had said earlier that morning when assigning the Club's work for the day:

"…As for you two, I have great news. Today's workload is much lighter, and should only take an hour or two at most."

"What?! No way!" Minichino had exclaimed. "You can't just change our hours like this! I won't stand for it!"

"Minichino, darling, I'm pretty sure he can," Mrs. Cinccino, had said while putting a paw on her shoulder.

"Well, yeah, but I don't want him to."

"Minichino, please, consider this a reward!" Mr. Persian had said. "The amount of effort you've put into each and every day is in need of returns. You've earned some time to relax." He had then turned his attention to Meowth. "The same goes for you, Meowth."

"What have I done to earn a break day?" he had asked. "I just sit around and wait for somebody to get injured."

"Well, Meowth… Erm… You…play a very important role in this company!" Like a lightswitch, his father's face had flicked from something resembling emotion to a hollowly charismatic grin. He always made that face when he was lying. "And, after all, somebody has to protect this higher-up of mine! He is very excited to examine you at work, even if his exposure is somewhat short."

Meowth had caught that morning that the excuse he gave for his limited hours was a farce, but now that these two strangers were in the picture, it was clear that every word was dripping with lies. Normally he couldn't care less about these sorts of things — he was used to being lied to — but this change to the landscape of his job suggested that he was sitting on the frame of his father's bigger picture.

"Ah, there you are!" Mr. Persian had finally noticed them. As he approached, Meowth noticed Mathew fiddle with his tie, as if spotting the deceptively cute purple bowtie wrapped around the cream-colored cat's neck had activated the cubone's neckwear sense.

"Hey, Mr. Persian!" Jermy exclaimed. "Look who I brought back with me!"

His father briefly scanned over the cubone and totodile before refocusing on the pikachu. "I presume that means you got what you wanted out of the endeavor?"

"Sure did."

"Why, hello there, sweethearts!" Mrs. Cinccino exclaimed, taking her place at Mr. Persian's side. "We don't see many totodiles out here, much less cubones."

"Yeah, we heard that," Mathew said. "My name's Mathew, and this guy over here is Joey."

"Nice to meet you!" Joey reached out a hand.

"Call me Mrs. Cinccino!" The chinchilla bowed, leaving Joey's unusual offer of greeting hanging. He slowly retracted it. "I'm Minichino's mother. Speaking of Minichino, I'm guessing she's off at the dump?"

"Yeah," Meowth replied.

"So, I'm guessing you're Meowth's father?" Mathew said to Mr. Persian, glancing at both father and son.

"Yes, I am." Mr. Persian bowed. Mathew made an awkward half-bow in return, as if he recognized the greeting but didn't know how to do it. "I own both the Pick-it Up Club and the resort you're standing in right now."

"Wow, you built all this?!" Joey exclaimed.

"Not with my own two paws! But I did help with the blueprints…and the finances." He snickered at his own understatement.

"Anyways," Jermy said. "We've got a crazy proposition for you." Jermy waved a hand towards the strangers." The three of us want to join the Pick-it Up Club!"

"Oh, really?!" Mrs. Cinccino exclaimed enthusiastically. "That's great!"

"Oh, my! This is quite unexpected!" Mr. Persian said. "It's been some time since we've employed new staff."

"We can always use some new hands, though! Maybe at this rate, we could cover three dungeons and a town all at the same time!"

"That would be nice, wouldn't it?" He turned around. "Follow me. There's a small office room we can speak in private nearby. You can come with us if you'd like, Meowth."

Meowth sighed. "Sure."

Mr. Persian led them deeper into the lobby. Past the wall dividing the reception desk from the resort was a large, open area coated with black and white tiled flooring, in stark contrast to the smaller, more homely lobby area at the front. To their left, the wall opened up to a sizable restaurant area. The white cloth layered atop the tables suggested its fanciness, as did the empty podium in the back awaiting late-night performers.

"Oh, wow," Mathew muttered.

"I see you've noticed our dining room," Mr. Persian commented. He paused in front of the entrance, giving a small bow to the receptionist. "It seems rather nice, yes? It's much like a mini-Silvalla's, if you've ever eaten there. Our catalog is rapidly growing, though - perhaps we will outmatch it someday."

"Maybe we should eat there!" Joey exclaimed.

"I've seen the menu," Meowth commented. "The food here is more expensive. I hope you're prepared to break your banks on it."

Joey's enthusiasm dropped. "Oh."

"I suppose you'll just have to give both a try sometime. Now then, let's not lose focus." Mr. Persian proceeded in leading the strangers onwards.

"Yeah! The sooner we get you hired, the better!" Mrs. Cinccino exclaimed.

The group was filtered into a hallway with glass walls presenting treadmills and weights for bipeds and quadrupeds alike on the left and candle-lit beddings ripe for massages on the right. The trio just kept on marveling, easily impressed. Go figure — this path to application also seemed to double as a tour of the hotel.

Just as they arrived at the back of the hotel, where a door between them and a glistening pool begged to be pushed open, Mr. Persian veered left into a narrower hallway. "Here we are," he said, pushing a different door ajar.

Unlike the lavish interior they had just passed by, the office before them was much more akin to the rest of the resort. Four cozy-looking beanbag chairs were splayed out in front of a mahogany desk. The green walls were lined with picture frames holding photos of people Meowth didn't recognize. Two clear windows, close enough for a view of the pool area, brought in rays of warm light. It was one of those rooms where you feel like home, until you try to sink your paws in the carpet floor only to find out it's layered too thin for comfort, reminding you that this is an office that conducts business and the home you were thinking of was just a distant memory.

Yeah…one of those rooms. And what better to couple the twisted memories it drew out with _her_?

"O-oh, Mr. Persian!" the bird with navy blue-colored feathers exclaimed. Unsurprisingly, Demurke was tending to Mr. Persian's busywork — today, that seemed to be sorting whatever kinds of ridiculously-sized document shelves a resort would have on hand. "I d-didn't expect you to check in for another h-half an hour…"

"Sorry, Demurke," Mr. Persian said. "I need to use this room for a short while. I have some soon-to-be employees to converse with."

"I-I see…" the murkrow said. She turned from her work to watch the group enter the room. "Uh, hi, Meowth," slipped out of her beak as soon as she spotted him.

"Hi." Usually, this was around the time in what few conversations the two had that Demurke would give Meowth a "message" or a "gift" from his father, but with no "message" to send and no "gift" to give, that was where their talk would end.

"Demurke," Mr. Persian said. "Could you please locate the applications for the Pick-it Up Club? They should be on top of my desk in my personal office. Bring four of them, just in case. Oh, and grab a pen as well."

"U-understood." Demurke promptly slipped out of the office. With her out of the way, Mr. Persian sat down behind the desk.

"Mrs. Cinccino, won't you sit next to me?"

Mrs. Cinccino walked around the desk, but paused in front of the one empty beanbag chair. "Mr. Persian, you sure you don't want-?"

"Don't worry," he said. "I've attended enough business meetings to learn the art of ignoring an aching behind. I don't need it."

"Well, if you insist…" Mrs. Cinccino slowly slid into the chair.

"Now then," Mr. Persian said to the group, still standing around. "Why don't you all settle down with us so we can discuss matters while we wait for my personal secretary to return?"

Meowth was the first to drop into one of the beanbag chairs, promptly sinking into it. Next to him, Joey stretched out his arms and fell back into another chair as if to trust-fall it. Mathew and Jermy presumably took the other chairs, though he didn't care to double-check.

The cat's eyes glazed over as the others jubilantly talked all about the Pick-it Up Club's activities and requirements. What was there for Meowth to learn that he didn't already know? They handled mystery dungeons based on priority of most polluted, Mrs. Cinccino cleaned the streets herself, and it all got chucked into a garbage dump. The whole process was officially endorsed by the Kalmwa'er Service Guild, who provided them with some supplies and staff. All merely on-the-tin stuff. He was beginning to question his decision to accompany the strangers if the only thing he was going to do was slowly sink into this chair—

"Uh, question," Joey said. "What's a mystery dungeon?"

Okay, he was obligated to answer that question.

"Mystery dungeons are areas where the topography changes at noon and midnight," Meowth explained from the comfort of his chair, reciting his classes the best he could. "As if the conditions weren't bad enough for establishing society, mystery dungeons deteriorate the minds of the pokémon who stay in them for extensive periods of time."

"Huh," Mathew said. "So people in there just go crazy, like those wingulls we—"

"EXACTLY LIKE THOSE WINGULLS YOU ESCAPED FROM," ORB said.

"…Oh. Well, if that's the case then—"

"No worries," Jermy said, assuring Mathew's concern. "You have to really mess up to go insane. As long as we stick together and do our research, we should be just fine!"

"Okay, that's good," Mathew said, immediately dispelling the stress from his voice.

Mrs. Cinccino looked to Mr. Persian. "Uh, Mr. Persian. Don't you find it weird that they—"

"That Jermy has such odd apparel decisions? Yes, I do!"

"Hey!" Jermy exclaimed, crossing his arms and sinking further into his seat.

Meowth was stunned. _Did he just…?_ The cat rose himself from lying to sitting. Mr. Persian was smiling awkwardly. He looked to Jermy, then back to him. Meowth couldn't help but put a claw to the tip of his mouth.

"Anyhow, now that our explanations are out of the way, we have one more matter to discuss." Mr. Persian leaned in slightly. "The matter of living accommodations. If you are going to stay here for some time, Jermy, you most likely need a place to stay, yes?"

"That's right," Jermy answered.

"Hah? Oh, yeah, I guess we do," Joey said.

"In that case… I'd like to make an offer. There are a few rooms on the upper floor of my resort prepared for fellows staying long term. Would you like to stay here? For a small price, of course."

So _that_ was his game here. Meowth had put together two pieces he had thought were connected for a while now — whatever Jermy was here to do, his father played an important role in it.

'You'd love it here!" Mrs. Cinccino exclaimed. "I've seen those rooms myself, and my, oh my, are they clean and sleek!"

"Sounds convenient enough to live and work at the same place," Mathew said.

"Yepperoni!" Jermy agreed. "So, what kind of price are we talking about here?"

A realization struck Meowth as his father punched the numbers in his head. The past few years of Meowth's life had been spent living in drab unknowns. These three strangers posed to him an opportunity to pursue some answers…but if he let his father house them out of his sight, he'd certainly lose that chance. He had to act.

"I believe it'd be around one hundred eighty poké or so per night," Mr. Persian said. That would be only fifty percent or so out of your collective daily paycheck, which would leave you with—"

Meowth stood up. "Why don't you three stay at my own home?"

The room went silent.

"…Huh?" Mrs. Cinccino was dumbfounded.

"Oh, um…" Jermy fumbled for a statement. "Meowth, that's really nice of you, but—"

"What kind of house do you live in, Meowth?" Joey asked.

"I live in a condo up in the upper side of town, which you seemed fond of earlier," Meowth began to explain. "I have enough spare rooms to fit all three of you. You would lose out on the proximity to the job, but you'd get back a clear view of the town, a filled kitchen, and individual rooms. You'd have a short walk to the gondola, so the beach and the rest of town are always within reach. And, most importantly, my father already pays the expenses for the condo, so all three of you would live rent-free."

Mathew nodded his head. "Well, damn. That's a sell if I've ever heard one."

"…Excuse me," Mr. Persian said, standing up. "Meowth, could we speak for a moment in private?"

Meowth shrugged. "Sure."

Mr. Persian and Meowth vacated the office room, returning to the narrow hallway.

"Before I say anything, I want to say that your pitch was incredible and I'm very proud of you," Mr. Persian said quietly. "That being said… What are you trying to do here, Meowth?!"

"What does it look like? I'm taking matters into my own hands," Meowth said. "I've made my case and it sounds like they liked it."

"Please, can you go back there and retract your statement?"

"No."

"Meowth, you don't understand. I have to—"

"Make more money? I get it. It's all you ever do these days."

"This isn't about—!"

"Mr. Persian!" Suddenly, Demurke stumbled into the conversation, driving a wedge between them. She showed Mr. Persian a clipboard she was carrying with sheets of paper. "I g-got those applications that you…" She glanced at Meowth and finally realized the tension in the hall. "Oh, s-sorry."

"It's fine," Meowth said. "This conversation is over." He turned around to open the door.

Behind him, his father sighed. "Oh, Meowth… Why must you make such strange decisions?"

"Here we are," Meowth said, pushing the creaky door open. "Make yourselves at home."

"Guys," Jermy said. "Are you really sure we should just barge into his place like this? I'm sure if we go back—"

"Don't care!" Mathew stormed into the condo, sending the backpack flying out of Joey's hands. "I didn't lug this giant-ass thing all the way back up just to go back down!" Awaiting him was a kitchen with a table surrounded by drawers, sinks, and microwaves; beyond that, the house opened up to a cozy living room with a television. The back wall was composed entirely of glass, giving a full view of Kalmwa'er's lower half.

"Wow, this is real nice!" Joey said behind Mathew, taking in their new living accommodations. "Er… You have two microwaves?"

"One of them was a birthday gift, the other came with the condo," Meowth explained. "Don't question it."

Jermy sighed. "This is really what we settled with…"

"DIDN'T YOU AGREE TO THIS, JERMY?" ORB said.

"I did, I did…" Jermy conceded. "But only because I was already outnumbered!"

"Come on…man!" Mathew exclaimed, dragging his backpack into the living room. "He gave this…to us…for free!" Mathew paused and whirled his head around the living room. The floor plan was L-shaped — from the living room, there were two rooms blocked by doors on the side walls, and a staircase on the right seemingly led up to more. "Hey Meowth, where can I settle in?"

"The room to the left is mine, and the right's a supply closet. Take one of the three rooms upstairs."

"Got it!" Mathew continued to lug his belongings to the corner, then slowly and steadily up the staircase. The second floor was a smaller living room with a few chairs, another television and three doors, one at each wall. Figuring that having all the light from Kalmwa'er shining into his room wouldn't make for a good night's sleep, Mathew pushed forward towards the door across from the back window. Three doorknobs awaited him: one his height, one slightly above Joey's height, and one above that. Turning the one at his level turned them all.

The room he stumbled into was modestly sized, with orange walls and a dark wooden floor. The walls were lined with unremarkable white cabinets, and the side facing the neighborhood had two small windows which brought in just enough light to be tolerable. To the left was another door, assumedly attached to a washroom. Not exactly a room he would spend all his time in, but Mathew supposed that was the point.

With one final tug, Mathew let the backpack stand. After a journey rife full of tough situations, dangerous foes, awkward conversations, _really_ awkward shutdowns, and unremarkable meetings, he had finally made it to a new home — a pretty one that was also free, at that! Mathew kept his train of thought going as he absentmindedly began to unpack. There were some issues he had to work out - ensuring his path with David was set and anything having to do with Joey, for one — but it was all things that could be solved with just a little ti—

…Huh. He packed this?

Mathew slid the thing out of his backpack. Of all the things he expected to find in there, this white book with a baby blue cross pattern wasn't one of them. In his defense, he had packed a _lot_ of things with little regard to timeliness, but it was still odd that he didn't remember putting it in. What would he ever need it for? All it was to him was a time capsule he never needed to…

…_He_ never needed to open it. On the other hand…

"Joey!" Mathew sprung into action, a plan concocted. He flung open the door and… "…Meowth?"

"Yes?" Meowth was in front of his new room, carrying behind him a disk-shape conglomeration of strand and straw.

"What the hell is that?"

"I'm bringing a nest for your room. Sleeping on the floor isn't very comfortable."

"Uh, okay, that's weird, but whatever! We'll talk about it later." Mathew shimmied past Meowth, holding the book to his chest. He rushed down the stairs as quickly as he could muster with his small but thick legs.

"…So you're saying you don't have any memories?" Jermy asked Joey as Mathew came into earshot.

"No, I — Oh, Mathew, hi—"

Joey could barely so much as get a greeting in before the cubone shoved the book into Joey's stubby little arms. "Take this!" he yelled.

"Why? What is it?" Joey asked, flabbergasted.

"It's a scrapbook, from Earth. You'll get some answers in there."

"What? Really?!" Joey's tone raised to excitement as he reached for the cover and—

As quickly as Mathew had given it to him, Mathew brought a hand down on the scrapbook and smacked it shut. "_Not_ in front of me." He eyed Jermy standing there awkwardly, the odd one out of this conversational shift. "Not in front of Jermy, either. You gotta read it when you're alone. Okay?"

Joey nodded. "Okay…"

"Good. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to figure out why we have the same bedding as birds." Mathew turned around and left his belonging in Joey's hands.

"What was that all about?" Jermy asked as Mathew stomped his way up the stairs.

Joey looked down at his gift. "I guess I'm about to find out…"


End file.
